Halloween Cookie Cake

Everyone deserves a spooky treat on Halloween, so try our Halloween Cookie Cake. It’s bound to delight your little (or large) ghouls and the recipe won’t scare you to death. Even making the bat shape isn’t too hard – or you can make a witch’s hat or a ghost or just a big circle. No matter the shape, it’s going to taste wonderful and add a festive touch to Halloween.

We asked our friend Jess, who makes large cookie cakes all the time, to help us with this recipe. It was her first time making a bat and we developed a good-tasting, nicely textured gluten-free recipe together. We used natural food colors from Color Garden, so there are no chemical food dyes in this recipe. Natural food colors come from real food, like turmeric for yellow, so those who are dye-sensitive can enjoy fun, brilliantly colored icings on desserts again. Want a fun kids’ project? Let them decorate the Cookie Cake themselves!

As written, this Cookie Cake is vegan, gluten-free and nut-free, so all the little monsters haunting your neighborhood can enjoy a bite. Servings depend on the sizes cut, but the recipe should make enough to share with 10 to 12 goblins.

Halloween Cookie Cake

2016-01-13 15:51:16

Serves 10

Everyone deserves a spooky treat on Halloween, and since this Halloween Cookie Cake is nut-free, gluten-free, and vegan, ghouls of all sizes can enjoy it!

Add second cup of gluten free flour blend and mix. If the cookie dough is too dry, add a little vanilla soy milk, one tablespoon at a time, until a firm but not crumbly dough ball forms. Do not add too much liquid, the dough should not be runny.

Knead in chocolate chips by hand until they are mixed throughout the cookie dough.

To make the bat (or any other shape), first create an outline with a thin strip of cookie dough on the lined cookie sheet. The cookie will not rise or expand much, so use all the space on the baking sheet to make your spooky creation.

Once you have created an outline - for a bat, it would include the main body, two large wings and a smaller head with two pointed ears - then press cookie dough into the outline, making it flat with your palm until it's not more than one inch or one and a half inches thick. Overlap dough, and really push it together to make the cookie dough adhere.

When the shape is all filled in, there may be a little dough leftover (or not). If there is leftover dough, make cookies on a second baking sheet to snack on, or store dough it in the freezer, tightly wrapped, to make cookies another day.

Bake 20- 22 minutes at 350 until top of the cookie is crisp and edges are just slightly browned.

Allow cookie to cool completely on baking sheet before attempting to move or frost it.

Cookie Cake can be served with or without decorative icing, per your preference.

ICING

Add shortening, margarine and vanilla to a large bowl and beat until fluffy with a hand mixer. Add powdered sugar gradually and be careful not to pour it too quickly, as it will "poof" all over you and your kitchen.

Continue adding powdered sugar a little bit at a time until a thick icing is formed. If icing seems too thick, add vanilla soy milk one teaspoon at a time to thin, but icing needs to be thick to pipe it onto the cookie.

If you want to make colorful icing, separate icing into as many bowls as you plan to color. Add a few drops of desired color to each bowl and stir. Start with less, because you can always add more, but once the drops are in there, they cannot be removed. A little bit of food coloring, even the natural kind, goes a long way.

To make chocolate icing, add cocoa powder to the bowl and mix it up. Add more or less, depending on how rich a chocolate color/flavor you want.

When ready to decorate the spooky Cookie Cake, spoon the icing into a zip-top bag and snip off a tiny bit of the bottom corner. Use this as a piping bag to write, make lines or patterns as desired on the cookie. If you need ideas about how to pipe icing in fancy ways, there are many free videos on YouTube with details on piping bag use.

Once decorated, store Cookie Cake in the fridge and eat within a few days, so the base doesn't get stale. Best served at room temperature.

Notes

This recipe can be used to make regular chocolate chip cookies, or fun Cookie Cakes at any time of year - Valentine's Day, Christmas, birthdays, etc.

the dirty hippie and the bohemian girl are working artists based in Baltimore. They write an eco-aware, flower power, neo-hippie, vegan blog that features travel profiles, original recipes and candid book & product reviews. They are excited to join forces with Sister Eden!

To visit the dirty hippie and the bohemian girl's website, click their byline. To read the rest of their posts on Sister Eden, click their tag at the top of the post.